Changes in My 'Hood

There's a very long traffic light on the cross street next to my house. Sometimes I head one street over to a street that has a stop sign if I am in a hurry.

The street has been closed for a couple of months, though. The other day, I noticed it was no longer blocked off. So I decided to use it.

And I saw something peculiar: the street had been paved with bricks.

I was fascinated. I decided to open up the car door and take a closer look.

I thought, "Oh my. We are about to be gentrified. The white folks are moving in. Bout to force the black folks out."

Some of the older black folks can't stand that. My father's family neighborhood is WOW. Brand new houses, white folks all over the place. All kinds of shops and eateries less than a mile from their house. (They gave me the side-eye when I talked about it and said they should go on "down there" and look around.)  I am glad they haven't lost their house in all the fray.

I'm not sure if there is about to be a big gentrification in the case of my neighborhood. There are white folks on my street, but the majority are up around the zoo area about a mile away. I live more on the hood edge of all of that.

But there is a very fancy park at the other end of the street. I have written about it. It even has the fancy water spouts.

All this in the hood.

Oh, and it's on the coming Beltline. That's some big circular green walkway that circles the city and connects various neighborhoods. I don't quite understand it fully. I just know it's coming our way.

Here's a picture of the end of the street where it meets the main road out of the neighborhood.

So I looked it up. From what I understand, these are bricks with 4 feet of tightly packed gravel underneath. So when it rains, the water does not flow to the edge of the street, but it filters through the bricks and downward to... somewhere.

I didn't quite understand the article. Construction science is not my thing.

But it looks like they will be paving my whole neighborhood as a solution to the massive flooding problems we have when it rains hard. I don't know if they will be paving my street, but the street next to mine has been marked up with white chalk. I think they are about to pave it.

That is interesting. It looks nice, but I am wondering how well it will hold up when stacked on top of gravel.

Brick roads will raise property values. I was underwater a couple of years ago, but I seem to have a fair amount of equity right now. *raised eyebrow*

This still seems like a big urban gentrification thing, though.

Hmm...